The new doc by filmmaker Stanley Nelson about Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple is fundamental viewing for anyone interested in faith, the varieties of religious experience, and the last, gasping death of the utopian philosophies of the 60’s (though this final rattle happens in ’78).

I was 7 years old when over 900 people, almost all US citizens, committed suicide in the jungles of French Guyana. This event and the death of Elvis are the only two news stories I can remember from my early youth. My grandfather on my Mother’s side had died shortly before the news hit that a Congressman had been assassinated by a cult and that a mass suicide had followed. It all resonated with me in a way that it never would’ve previous to the loss of my mother’s father. And I’m sure that the two experiences in tandem forged my lifelong obsession with belief structures and the spiritual dimension of human existence.

Faith brings out our greatest beauty and our deepest flaws. Brings us together and tears us down. Illuminates and blinds.

This film is a fine exploration of that inherent dichotomy, but it’s not perfect. Nelson skims over the early days of the church to make more screen time for the fateful, and admittedly engaging, final day. This robs us of some of the broader social context of the largest mass suicide in modern history. He also rushes past the descent of Jim Jones from idealism into messianic, solipsistic insanity. I would’ve gladly sat through another hour of this film just to get at the pith of his dysfunction. Jones clearly had vision and influence, and was an undeniable force in the racial integration of religious communities at the time.

But I’m nitpicking. When the final day begins to unroll, the film becomes so gut wrenching in its depiction of the crazy mechanics of how it all went down that it brought me to tears.

What comes through in all of this is the idea that in the end it wasn’t so much the madman who kept these people invigorated and hopeful and filled with life. It was the community those people had built for themselves. It was each other. And in that there is some sad solace. The madman was just a bookshelf, but the books, the books were those people. Those lovely arcadians and dancing utopians, all so hungry for a more loving, less judgmental world. They were people who simply woke up one day from a long dream and realized that they were far, far too lost in the jungle to ever make it back home again.

I wonder if we, as a species, will ever be able to believe in our collective power without a charismatic Napoleon to gather and goad us.

Or does it take a monster?

Try to see it if you can.

Here’s the Trailer.And here is the complete tape found in a tape recorder under Jim Jones’ chair after the mass suicide in Jonestown on November 18, 1978.

“Shot in Vancouver’s seediest district on a budget of only $100,000 (Cdn), Hitler Meets Christ (from a stage play by actor Michael Moriarty) follows two mentally ill, homeless men, who have mysteriously assumed the personae of the polar opposites of good and evil…” – from the article “Just How Far Does God’s Love Extend?”

This Feature Length Film, based on Michael Moriarty’s play Hitler and Christ Meet Death at the Port Authority Bus Terminal threatens to be either brilliant, gloriously pretentious or both! Both is good by me.

They admit to having seen only 15 Asian horror films and then proceed to criticize those movies in incredibly Western aesthetic terms. It’s sort of like if a Rough Guide to American Prison Cinema failed to mention Cool Hand Luke, Papillion and the entire sub-genre of women’s prison exploitation cinema.

But for those of you who’ve recently gotten the Asian horror bug (which to my mind means you’re ready to explore some of the most interesting pop-film in the world today) than the above link can help you get started, I suppose. Or lead you in the direction of some very tedious movies that will turn you off of Asian Horror all together.

I’d like to take the liberty to respond critically to the guide linked above and, in so doing, turn you on to a more dangerous and more creative kind of Asian horror cinema. If you like your flicks weird, out of control and ambitious… then keep reading.

The classifications “Asian Horror” and “Extreme Asian” don’t mean exactly the same thing, but the two film movements do feed each other quite a bit. The film TETSUO: IRON MAN managed to break new ground for both horror and extreme Asian cinema on nothing but a shoestring budget and is also one of the few true cyberpunk masterworks from any culture.

Their Guide is mostly concerned with more accessible and traditional horror fare, and that’s the problem. They leave out obvious masterpieces, particularly in the “Extreme-Asian” and existential J-horror set. Works like the groundbreaking Tetsuo: Iron Man, Visitor Q, and Cure as well as more recent films like Three Extremes are completely missing from the list (though Chan-wook Park’s chapter in Three Extremes sort of sucks, but the other two more than make up for it).

My guide would include much of the softer, more commercial choices as well, but would not ignore the extreme underbelly of Asian Horror, which is where, to my mind, the really interesting creative decisions are being made right now.

VISITOR Q is Japanese director Takashi Miike at his most intense. The film is a horror movie, a comedy and an existential journey into the erosion of the Japanese culture. Beyond that it cannot be explained and can barely even be experienced. Be warned, this is a work of questionable moral content.

Meanwhile their Guide’s criticism of films it does include leaves much to be desired. To me the author misses the most enjoyable aspects of many of the movies. The Eye is mentioned as being weak on plot (true), but there’s no comment on the fact that it’s the creepiest exorcise in gore-less horror imagery since the original Haunting. The author says Uzumaki has “no real emotional core to the horror”, but fails to mention that the whole thing is supposed to be gloriously cheesy and comically manipulative. The movie plays with time wonderfully, so that it can pace out each freaky revelation in perfect cadence. It is completely overboard and silly. Then he proceeds to claim that The Ring is the best he’s seen of the Asian horror film movement. Well, it might be – to him – and I certainly do appreciate the writer’s taste for slower films (being a cinephile – I love a good, slow movie), but The Ring is just as contrived and emotionless as the other fare, only without the extreme conclusions and fierce imagination that I, personally, go to Asian horror to experience in the first place.

On top of this, theme as an element and engine of the films included is entirely missing from the criticism in their Guide. Much of Asian cinema is theme obsessed, to not let that factor into your criticism is to not fully understand the context and relevance of the film. This leads me to believe that the Author cannot see beyond his own cultural expectations of what horror should be.

CURE is experimental in its structure. As each scene unfolds and central locations are established, the film begins to use more and more of an image-based shorthand. Until the last act descends into a steady stream of disconnected images which reference events and locations from the previous acts, leaving the end of the film uncertain and dreamlike. A stunning work.

The author of the Guide recommends the absolutely extraordinary Audition… but again, doesn’t seem even slightly interested in the themes at play in it… which is exactly what makes the film so brilliant to me.

THREE EXTREMES showcases the talents of a trio of Asia’s fiercest contemporary filmmakers. Fruit Chan’s DUMPLINGS short is actually cut from a feature film of the same name. Despite losing more than 30 min. of its running time DUMPLINGS is still an exquisite horror masterpiece. The image shown here is from Takashi Miike’s brilliant segment, THE BOX

I understand that the Rough Guide I’ve linked to above is just somebody posting in the ever-empowering world of free form thought known as the Internet. But I love Asian cinema, and to see someone defining the extremely wide and eclectic body of work that is “Asian Horror” through its most mainstream, watered down examples, without paying any attention to its roots or its flares of wild excess, is to end up ignoring the contributions of some of the most expressive, challenging and promethean filmmakers in the world today.

So check out their Rough Guide, pick a film from it and, after watching it, if you agree with the writer’s opinions then good on you.

But if you think that his/her take on the film you’ve just seen is a little, well, intellectually lazy… then you just come on back home to daddy and watch one of the films I’ve talked about in this post.

Because there’s a lot more going on in Asian Horror than “The Rough Guide” would lead a novice explorer to believe.

UZUMAKI is delirious horror fun. ‘Nuff Said.

PS: A very commercial flick that did not make the Guide was the wonderfully watchable film (originally targeted toward the 15 year-old Japanese girl in all of us) One Missed Call. It came out two years after the less impressive Korean film Phone and shared some of the same ideas. While being an amalgamation of J-horror cliches, it somehow still manages to be insightful, smart, deeply engaging and above all… fun.

Neill Blomkamp continues to use Science Fiction to explore social issues in post-apartheid South Africa with this short film TETRA VAAL.

“After you see it once, replay the video and pay attention to some of the poses that the robot makes. Let us, for example, take a look at the robot holding the machine gun upright in a rather patronizing and authoritative manner while patrolling the streets of Johannesburg. Then there is the car ride and casual looking through the window in a slight mixture of relaxation, readiness and anticipation we would expect from say, a NYPD officer ready to go to action in some American movie. Perfect analogy to human behavior and some good cliche pickups make quite a combination.”

However, TETRA VAAL isn’t nearly as cool as the absolutely extraordinary ALIVE IN JOBERG which is everything that genre should be, at least to my mind.

Some people have been calling his stuff derivative, with ALIVE IN JOBERG being a take on the film ALIEN NATION and TETRA VAAL being a riff on ROBOCOP. But the work has such resonance as social commentary that the updating of these ideas in his hands seems almost necessary (of course ROBOCOP is a top notch example of relevant social satire in and of itself).